Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal

award to be notified by end Dec

After nearly six years, the final award of the Cauvery Waters Dispute Tribunal will be notified by the
end of this month. States sharing the disputed Cauvery river waters were informed about this today.
At a meeting of the Cauvery Monitoring Committee (CMC) here, Secretary Water Resources D V Singh
who chairs the panel told representatives of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry that
steps shall be taken to notify the final award of the tribunal at the earliest, but not later than the
end of this month.
The meeting of the CMC was convened today to give an interim order on water sharing between
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Once a gazette notification is issued, institutions like the Cauvery River Authority(CRA) chaired by the
Prime Minister and the CMC will cease to exist.

Representational Image. AFP

The Tribunal, comprising chairman Justice N P Singh and members N S Rao and Sudhir Narain, in a
unanimous award in February, 2007 had determined the total availability of water in the Cauvery
basin at 740 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet at the Lower Coleroon Anicut site.
The proceedings of the Tribunal, set up in June, 1990, went on for more than 16 years.
In, what was then described as a balancing act, the Tribunal gave Tamil Nadu 419 TMC of water(as
against the demand of 562 TMC); Karnataka 270 TMC (as against its demand of 465 TMC); Kerala 30
TMC and Puducherry 7 TMC.
For environmental protection, it had reserved 10 TMC.

The Tribunals award will come into effect within 90 days of its notification by the Centre. As per law,
the award comes into being after being notified by the Centre through its publication in a gazette.
New organisations like the Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee
will be constituted which will have representatives from all the co-basin states, experts in hydrology
and agriculture.
They will be headed by an officer of the central government and will be under the control of the
Centre.
It is hoped that with this organisation in place, the difficulties in sharing of water in the Cauvery
basin would be sorted out without any outside influence. Similar Boards like the Bhakra Beas
Management Board and the Tungabhadra Board are working quite well in sharing of water between
co-basin states, the CMC order read.
The CMC also asked Karnataka to provide Tamil Nadu with 12 TMC of Cauvery water during
December even as it asked both the states to be more efficient in using available water.
The meeting of the CMC came after the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the multi-state panel to
meet within the next two days to decide water requirement of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
It would seem equitable if Karnataka should manage water in such a way that Tamil Nadu receives 12
TMC during the month of December, 2012, the Committee said in its interim award.